Speaking to Deadline at CES, union presidents Sean Astin and Duncan Crabtree-Ireland were asked what the deal could mean for the acting industry. In 2023 and 2024, SAG-AFTRA will strike to ensure better protections against synthetic artists and actors signing away their voice rights. Crabtree-Ireland admitted that she was not fully aware of the agreement between the two companies, but revealed that she had contacted SAG-AFTRA before it was publicly disclosed.
In the call announcing the deal, “top executives” from Disney and OpenAI said there were “certain assurances” in the deal, such as “explicitly excluding any licensing of any artist’s images or voices”, Crabtree-Ireland explained. “I have a concern, and I hope Shawn’s shares, that’s why Disney would want to do this. It might be smart to do a deal like this before the IP litigation, the copyright litigation, is resolved.”
While that doesn’t stop Disney from partnering with OpenAI, SAG-AFTRA knows it has taken progress as far as it can. Crabtree-Ireland said the union’s contract from 2023 requires companies to proactively disclose whether they have created and used synthetic performance, about which there has been “zero notice” so far. But they’re not stopping there: Every future SAG-AFTRA conversation will “include looking at how AI is playing out and evolving.” Machine learning technology has evolved significantly in recent years, and is expected to “continue to create a separation between AI and humanity as algorithmic tools.”
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